My last post was about a remarkable picture of a fallen soldier’s dog taken by an ABC photographer for the show 20/20.

I made the mistake of reading some of the comments by readers following the story on the ABC website. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are so many bitter, cynical, angry people in the world. What always surprises me is that someone would read a story they know will make them angry and take the time to write comments like these:

Can anyone guess why the USA has become the laughing stock of the planet? We are, indeed, a ship of fools.

This is the worse “God is on our side” piece of crap I’ve ever read. You can stick god’s dog where the sun don’t shine.

Am I reading National Enquirer or ABC News? this is absolutely pathetic and insulting.

Christ, this is what news has become in the 21st century? Shame.

They walk among us, but they live in a different world from most of us.

Yesterday I got an email and picture from a reader, Diane Knowland.

… I found your beam of light post very touching.

In June of 2010 I lost my once in a lifetime dog, Diva. There is a link to her tribute on my website.

We ended up taking Diva to the emergency clinic to have her put to sleep around midnight and buried her that night around 2:00AM. The following afternoon I was working on her grave, planting flowers and building the rock wall. It was a cloudy day and as I worked on placing the rocks just so, I stepped back to take a picture.

Right at that moment, the sun shone through a break in the clouds and a beam of light descended to her grave. I took it as a sign from her that she had crossed the bridge and was waiting for me. I've attached a copy of the picture I took.

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.Will Rogers

You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.Robert Louis Stevenson

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.Mark Twain

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.James Thurber

A photoshoot for the television program 20/20 has caused the photographer to wonder about life after death.

Justin Rollins had been killed in the line of duty in Iraq. Before his death he emailed pictures of him playing with a puppy he had found. Army officials attending the funeral asked the family what they could do to help, as is customary. They asked if the puppy could be found and sent to them.

The chances of finding her were one in a million. However an all out massive search by soldiers in Justin’s battalion located the puppy and she was flown to her new home in New Hampshire.

ABC photographer, Kimberly Launier, was filming the story for 20/20 while Justin Rollin’s parents, Skip and Rhonda, were playing with the dog, Hero. Launier wrote:

Sometimes when Rhonda hugged Hero she would softly pet her face and coo, “Justin, are you in there?” It was Rhonda’s gentle way of remembering their son and his last living connection to Hero.

At one point, Hero wandered off and took a stroll in the backyard. All of a sudden, the clouds broke and a light began to solidify in a beam directly down on Hero — a kind of vertical halo. As this dramatic ray of light was shining on Hero she turned to look at me, and it was all I could do to hold the camera steady and not drop it in astonishment. It was an unforgettable moment, and made me wonder if in fact Justin was in there. Then the light vanished.

I couldn’t wait to check my camera’s playback to see if it caught the stunning beam. When I saw that it did, I was so happy that I burst out dancing. It was a great moment to share with Justin’s parents. We all laughed together, and wondered if perhaps this had been a sign from Justin.

If the football games get boring or you just don’t like football, NBC has the 10th annual World Dog Show at 12 ET.

One of the new dogs featured will be the Xoloitzcuintli. (show-low-ee-SQUINT-lee). Most people just call them Show-lows.

These hairless dogs are native to Mexico. They date back to the Aztecs where they were considered to be sacred. In the 1940s they were becoming extinct until a group of Mexicans began searching out the dogs in remote mountain villages and desert outposts.

Today they are becoming popular with people who have allergies or don’t like to clean up after a shedding dog.

I feel a strong connection with these dogs.

Mickey, my first dog, had parents who were both purebred Chihuahuas, but Mickey was hairless except for her chest and underside of her tail. The breeder gave the dog to my dad to get rid of her before any buyers showed up, warning him that she may not live long.

The runt of the litter, she was my companion for 15 years, growing to a sturdy 12 pounds. She was the result, I am sure, of some genetic throwback to a long forgotten mating of a Chihuahua and Xoloitzcuintl in Mexico.

Traditionally under the law, dogs are regarded as property. In any wrongful death no matter how devastated the owners have been, the most they could hope for has been the market value.

Or to put it another way, a dog bred in a puppy mill and sold at an inflated price in a pet store has more value than a free puppy or a dog rescued from a shelter, no matter how important the dog has become to a family. An older dog has less market value than a young dog.

In Texas a state appeals court has made a groundbreaking ruling that a dog’s value is greater than the market value.

…the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth ruled this month that the couple can sue, saying sentimental damages can be recovered for the loss or destruction of all types of personal property, including pets. Source

In June 2009, Avery, an 8-year-old Lab mix belonging to Jeremy and Katherine Medlen and their children, was spooked by a thunderstorm and escaped from their yard. He was picked up by the Fort Worth animal control and taken to the shelter.

Jeremy Medlen found him at the shelter the next day but didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay the fees. He went back the next day with the cash, but was told that they couldn’t release Avery until the veterinarian who was out for a couple of days could put in a microchip.

When Medlin and his children showed up on the day they were told with the fees to release Avery, he was nowhere to be found. In spite of a “hold for owner” tag on the list of animals, Avery had been killed.

The Medlens sued the shelter worker saying her negligence led to his death and asking for “sentimental intrinsic value” because Avery was “irreplaceable” in spite of having little market value.

The county judge dismissed the lawsuit. The Medlens appealed the dismissal and a panel of the 2nd Court of Appeals in an 11 page decision said that the “special value” of pets should be preserved.

Randy Turner, a Fort Worth attorney representing the Medlins for no payment said:

This is a huge deal for pet owners. Up until the Medlen case, if a person came to see me wanting to sue someone for killing their dog, I had to tell them it was not worth it. No matter how attached they were to their pet, and no matter how devastated they were by its death, they [had been] only entitled to the 'market value' of the animal.

Now a jury can at least put a sentimental value on an animal that is otherwise worthless in terms of what it could have sold for on the open market.

The Medlens said they didn't sue to win money.

"We wanted to have a law in place that would protect animals from being hurt," Katherine Medlen said. "Before this, animals were considered property, and you weren't allowed to sue or be compensated for sentimental value. The hurt we experienced was nowhere comparable to a piece of property." Source

On the other hand, and there is always an other hand, making wrongful deaths more lucrative will open doors to suits against veterinarians, groomers and dog walkers.

I can imagine someone whose dog gets hit by a car suing the driver, the maker of the car, and maybe the state or city that built the road.

Brandy Mae the Poodle scaled a six foot barbed wire fence to escape from the Open Arms Animal Hospital in Mississippi.

After searching for nine days, her owner, Kathy Brausen had just about given up hope of finding her.

"Deep down I thought after that many days she is such a little dog that she would never, ever make it home," said Brausen.

Then she got a call from the same animal hospital where Brandy Mae had escaped saying she had been found by a garbage collector at the spot where she had gone missing.

"He was picking up their garbage and he saw her lying under a couch out there, supposedly, and there were people sitting on the couch and they didn't know she was under there and he noticed her and they caught her," said Brausen.

She was a little thinner and dehydrated, but otherwise in good condition. The story

This book is a little gem. It isn't often that I review something that i think everyone will enjoy.

Actually this is more than just a book. It is a perpetual calendar, a keepsake, where you can record birthdays, gotcha days for adopted dogs, anniversaries and any important dates that you want to remember from year to year.

Besides the calendar entries, it features 75 black and white historic photographs of people from generations past, posing with their beloved dogs. The nostalgic images are from the Bancroft Library collection at the University of California, Berkeley.

Featured are photographs of the anonymous and the famous. Photos of ranch hands, children, farmers, a prospector, and heiresses are included. Following the San Francisco earthquake and fire, families were forced to live in tents and their family dogs are photographed posing with them.

Throughout are literary quotations about dogs by Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Rudyard Kipling, Queen Victoria, John Steinbeck and many more.

Everything about the book/calendar is the highest quality, from the hard cover to the heavy stock pages. It is spiral bound for ease in writing notations. The convenient size (7” by 7” -152 pages) will tuck into your desk drawer, but you won’t want to hide it away.

Everyday Dogs will make a thoughtful and lasting gift for anyone, but you will want to keep one for yourself.